Geneva, Switzerland, 29 May 2024 - Nominations for the 2023-25 cycle of the Aga Khan Music Awards are now open. The triennial Awards, which come with $500,000 in prizes, recognise exceptional creativity, promise and enterprise in music that has flourished in cultures shaped by Islam.

“His Highness the Aga Khan established the Music Awards in 2018, and it is with pride and excitement that we look towards the third Awards cycle,” says Fairouz Nishanova, Director of the Aga Khan Music Programme and the Aga Khan Music Awards.

“The Awards and Music Programme have succeeded in building a strong community – a family – whose members live worldwide and are bound together by a love and respect for music that speaks directly to our hearts and souls. I look forward to discovering new nominees who speak diverse musical languages and share a power to lead us towards what is best and highest in ourselves and in others.”

Nominations for the Music Awards will be solicited from a distinguished international group of performing artists and music specialists, who include educators, scholars, producers, arts presenters, and representatives of civil society and cultural development organisations. They are asked to recommend nominees whose work embodies or showcases music’s traditional role as a source of spiritual enlightenment, moral inspiration and social cohesion. Nominees may be individuals, groups, or organisations.

Domains in which nominees may have demonstrated distinction include:

• creation of a musical work or body of work (which may be in the form of notated music, recordings, video, film, or digital media);
• musical performance;
• music-related social or humanistic endeavours (education; preservation, revitalisation, documentation and dissemination; social inclusion; and/or research and scholarship); and
• the development, sustainability and availability of music or musical institutions.

Nominations submitted to the Awards secretariat will initially be reviewed by an expert panel, which will select semi-finalists for consideration by the master jury. The identity of nominators is to remain confidential.

The first Aga Khan Music Awards ceremony took place in Lisbon, Portugal from 29-31 March 2019. It was co-hosted with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Lisbon Municipality. The second Awards ceremony celebrated its 15 laureates in Muscat, Oman, at the Royal Opera House Muscat, from 29-30 October 2022.

The Awards are governed by an Advisory Council co-chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan and his brother, Prince Amyn Aga Khan. They are administered by the Aga Khan Music Programme, an endeavour of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

The master jury that selects winners will be drawn from eminent musicians, arts presenters, producers and arts education leaders. Award winners will pursue professional development opportunities arranged in collaboration with the Music Awards during each triennial awards cycle. These opportunities, supported by special grants, will include commissions for the creation of new works, contracts for recordings and artist management, support for pilot education initiatives, and technical or curatorial consultancies for music archiving, preservation and dissemination projects.

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